Letters to the Editor
stackey-dackey
Published Letters: 324 Editor's Choice: 8
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After reading 60 pages of letters...
[Read the article: Who cares if Eliot Spitzer hires prostitutes?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've come to the following conclusions:
1) Tina, you drive me insane. Even when I agree with you. Though you never resort to using profanity, there's such scorn and derision in your posts towards those who disagree with you. I wonder if you know how you sound to other people? I've had that problem in that past, especially writing emails. This is just a discussion about prostition; chances are, prostitution won't be legalized. So you don't have to worry.
2) Anecdotal evidence (my friend is a happy hooker, i lived in Europe, Australia, etc and those hookers are just as oppressed) does not a point make. I don't think you can make the argument that it's better for prostitution to be illegal for the actual health of the prostitutes. Getting monthly tests, being able to report violent Johns to police, etc., I don't see how that could be construed in any way shape or form as a bad thing.
The whole exploitation argument also seems silly to me; isn't the prostitute exploiting the man (or woman) as well? He's risking just as much as he or she is, in terms of STD's. There's also plenty of prostitutes who 1)beat up Johns 2) rob them and they too don't have much recourse.
If it's all about power, then wouldn't it make sense to even the playing field by making it a legal transaction between sex vender and sex buyer?
3) The fact is, most of you decrying prostitution think it's immoral. You worry, perhaps rightly, that it perpetuates the idea of woman as sex objects. (Though how this jibes with all those Thai boy prostitutes, I don't know.) The fact is, as one of the folks who hate prostitution has said, it's a choice. You don't have to lie on your backs and be, as Tina so quaintly said earlier, a "cum rag" for some man. Sure, there are cases of teenage girls and boys, runaways, getting turned out, etc., and ofcourse, human trafficking, but for most people here in the US you choose that lifestyle. If women, of their own volition, choose to be cum rags for hundreds of men, who am I to tell them no.
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What sort of man has sex with a hooker and doesn't want to wear a condom?
[Read the article: Who cares if Eliot Spitzer hires prostitutes?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My Lord, I find this the most disturbing thing about the whole encounter. I mean, Spitzer, are you insane? I had a friend who was a call girl (1,000-variety) and she went on a job in the Hollywood Hills with some big hot shot producer, and the guy wouldn't put a condom on, and he gave her herpes. It got her out of the business for awhile, but then she was back to "escorting" after a few months. Which should be a warning to all of you who might use prostitutes! I don't care how expensive they are, they can still have diseases!
(I am in no way using her experience to inform my feelings on prostitution.)
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I'm sorry
[Read the article: FGM? Not on my wife!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"I also don't believe for a second that those men don't know full well what FGM really is and what it really does. They keep the practice going from knowledge that it works like a charm, not ignorance."
If they beleive it's the right thing to have their future wives cut in such a way, then they wouldn't lie to some foreigner. They would be proud of it. The fact is that the procedure is done prior to marriage, sometimes before the girl even has an offer of marriage. It's done by other women to women. Saying that it only functions as a way to keep women faithful is, I think, a gross simplification. Until the women who preform it stop doing it and the young men refuse to marry a circumcised bride (maybe they should show the before and after and list all of the complications, especially when women try to have children) then it's going to go on. Unfortunately, Sudan has a lot of problems, and I'm sorry to say, FGM is just a very small one in comparison to some bigger ones.
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You went to one Dim Sum Place in SF Chinatown
[Read the article: How the fortune cookie crumbles]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And that means you are an expert. Wow.
I lived next to SF Chinatown (in North Beach actually, even though I've always "hated Italian food, though they had this place with mussels, bows of gummy bears) and I do have to say it was one of the dirtiest places I have ever seen. I mean, lord, it was horrific. I swear, at night when I was walking back from the a downtown bar, I saw rats bigger the dachsunds.
I never ate there (except at that place whose name is escaping me on Montgomery which always has the line outside and the waiters are kinda rude and won't let you order the same thing as someone else at your table)but like an earlier poster said, the best Chinese food was found in the Richmond District.
I got really sick of American Chinese food pretty early in my life, since it was always either King Wongs (WAHS?) in downtown Oakland or Mexicali Rose (by the jail) when I was growing up. Not to mention the large amount of fried rice I ate every day after school from the liquor store up the street.
However, I do remember hanging out at my best friends house and her parents surprise that I actually liked their Chinese hot dogs (at least that's what they called them) and wasn't all, where's the Mu Shu Pork, like most americans. I also ate a lot at my Korean friends house, but I did block most of those meals out. Ugh, I don't see how jamiso can prefer Korean, but I wouldn't presume to know everything about all of Korean cuisine, but I think I shat blood the first time I ate Kim Chee.